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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

"Fun" things I learned today

About 70% of church revenues do come from church tax. This is about €8.5 billion...The church tax is historically rooted in the pre-Christian Germanic custom where the chief of the tribe was directly responsible for the maintenance of priests and religious cults. During Christianization of Western Europe, this custom was adopted by the Christian churches...

A taxpayer, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant...will pay additionally between 8% (Bavaria) and 9% (rest of the country) of his income tax to the church or other community he or she belongs to.

Ok, this is not to say that I didn't know that Germany had a church tax, because I totally knew that. What I didn't realize is that getting out of the church tax isn't always as easy as writing "no religion" on your registration form.

Now, all this stuff doesn't really matter to me, but André doesn't want to give up any more of the sweet, sweet duckets that he earns than he has to...which means no church tax for him. However, this also means that he has to go through the official process of leaving the church...which he never really belonged to in the first place, with the small exception of his christening...but seeing as how André can't remember what he had for breakfast this morning, I really don't see how that should count.

Anyway, while researching "Wie trete ich aus der Kirche aus?" (How do I leave the church?), we found a website telling us just about everything we ever wanted to know about the topic.

In typical bureaucratic German fashion, one has to (depending the state in which one lives):

* go to a municipal or district court, otherwise the local registry office

* fill out a form

* (in some places) pay a fee (31 EUR in Hamburg)

And then you still have to wait until the end of the month for your "resignation" to take effect...

And then sometimes you'll get a letter from a priest who will try to convince you to come back to church

Compare this to the way I left the church...

*ahem*

I pulled the sheets over my head and went back to sleep.

No, the German way seriously sounds like a big hassle...you know, like when you sign up for one of those free AOL trial offers and then at the end of the trial offer you want to get out of it, but you gotta like go through a whole bunch of shit to do it. Then in the end you still have to basically join the witness protection program to stop getting phone calls from AOL.

That's way too much work...I mean even for eternal salvation (or eternal damnation, in this case?).

Anyway, to add insult to injury, the office where André can go say "Peace out" to Jesus (government-style) is only open on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays...which are all days when he has class.